Rounding Up
by ice-woman
Summary: Lexie follows Alex to Joe's, but she's not so sure she should be following Alex anymore. One-shot; Lexie/Alex, Lexie/Mark. Spoilers for all aired episodes.


**rounding up**  
lexie/alex, lexie/mark  
spoilers for all aired episodes. one-shot.

* * *

Reaching the bottom of a whisky sour never took so long. She's lost in thought, distracted, and Alex is joking back and forth with Joe, while those damn Mercy West doctors laugh behind her, a group in their own rights. In a weird way, they remind her of Meredith, Cristina, Alex, and Izzy, a core group that no one really penetrates. She can laugh and help and pry, but she can never really belong with either.

Alex laughs and runs his hand down her back. She shivers inadvertently. There's not a place in this city without residue of her and Mark. She remembers sitting in this exact spot, Mark standing behind her, playing with her hair while he let Callie vent to him; some problem with Arizona or maybe her father; she can't quite remember.

"You okay?" Alex asks suddenly, and she bites down on her lip, resentful of the fact that it took him exactly eighty nine minutes and roughly twenty seconds to realize that _no,_ she's not her fucking self.

She's wrong to blame him, for all he knows, this _is_ who she is now. She's not being fair to anyone.

"Yeah," she lies, nodding as she pushes her glass forward. Joe offers her a beer, her usual order, and she obliges. She can feel Alex's eyes still on her.

"Lex."

Lexie squeezes her eyes shut. She's not going to cry in front of him. She's not going to _fucking_ cry.

She takes a deep breath, nearly choking on air. She's not ready for this. She's not ready to have this conversation. Being an adult never felt so strange.

"You were um...you were checking on your patient," she begins, nails tapping nervously against her beer. Her leg starts shaking and Alex places his hand on her thigh, forcing her to turn to him.

"What is it?" he asks, and she's going to lose it, she _really, really_ is.

She tries to swallow back tears. "Mark told me he's still in love with me." There, she thinks; rough, blunt, and unedited.

Alex's face remained unchanged.

Her eyes widen. "Well?" she demands.

"Well what?" he asks slowly.

Her face falls. "Well, nothing? That's it? No questions? You don't even want to know what I said back?"

He shrugs. "Well, you're here, aren't you?"

Were it physically possible, she thinks the pressure of her hand would shatter the glass bottle its wrapped around.

"Well, yeah," she agrees.

"So, if you want to tell me what you said, you can. But I'm not going to ask," he insists.

This is who he is. She's always known this. He won't demand anything from her, and she's got to learn to do the same. He won't force her to change and she can't ask him to be somebody he's not.

"I know," she nods, understanding. "I didn't expect you to get all jealous or crazy or whatever. But, you _really_ don't want to know?" She's speaking about _them_ now and she's been weighing pros and cons since she left the hospital, and it's not right of her, to be testing him like this.

He sighs. "Of course I want to know," he admits, taking a swig of his beer. "But I'm not going to ask."

There's a distinction. He's setting boundaries and limits and she's too wrapped up in Mark's words to figure Alex out right now.

"Okay," she nods, turning back to her beer. She feels his grip loosen on her leg.

She counts the ticks of the clock in her head, a steady, soothing rhythm that calms her back down.

She hears Alex curse under his breath as he slams his drink down. "Well now I can't stop thinking about it," he mutters.

Lexie smiles slightly. "Well, if you're not going to ask, I'm not going to tell," she teases, looking away from him playfully.

Alex leans towards her. "Fine, you win. Now tell me."

She realizes she shouldn't necessarily be grinning. Her smile fades slightly when she realizes she can't tell him the whole truth. She's never really ready for what she asks for.

"I told him I was with you," she says slowly. There's no mention of husbands or hesitations or how she stood there dumbly, watching him leave. There's no talk of what his words mean and if she still loves him or if she ever really did at all. His _I love you_ is more than just an _I miss you_. They're the words neither of them ever mustered up the courage to say aloud before. And now, months later, disasters strewn in between them, she hates how much weight his words still bear.

Alex pulls back from her. "You don't look so sure."

She shakes her head. "No, it's just...we never said that before. It was just...weird to hear after all this time."

His face hardens.

Lexie's hand falls over his. "I told him I was with you," she repeats.

There's an old saying about a duck running through her head. She thinks that maybe, if she acts like a duck, she'll learn to believe it.

* * *

fin.


End file.
